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At times, one might think that certain places exist only in one eternal season. Sanditon could feel like that. The lightness of the summer evenings in which one could stroll along the beach until nearly 10 o’clock. The heavily laden trees, when blossoms would give way to the growth of fruit. The warmth of water on one’s feet seemed to grow through the summer months as the sun cast a steady presence across the ocean. Visitors to Sanditon marked the season, too. The steady stream of people promenading along the seafront, the footfall coming to take tea in the Assembly Rooms. Even Chawston’s bakery celebrated the season, with seasonal fruits within or decorating his choice of baked goods.
But as the season had slowed down, Charlotte’s had come to an abrupt halt. Each time. Stepping into a carriage to journey to Willingden. Back home in time for the harvest. To reap the fruits - of what …? What was the effort of it all, what was the bounty? And what was the gain? She had asked herself these questions many times.
Everything that one prepared oneself for. To dress, and know how to behave as a young lady in society. To be able to have polite conversations, to entertain the room with one’s skill on the pianoforte. To take the hand of a man and be ‘guided’ around a dance floor. Did she really need to be guided around a room? Did she really need the hand of a man to be placed in the small of her back to get from one side of the room to another?
What had Rev. Hankins called them on one of her first days in attendance at Sanditon church? ‘Blossoms … to be plucked’. One could have felt the heaviness in the church as any women independent of spirit heaved a collective sigh of disdain at the man. But it wasn’t the first.
This need for women to have these virtues, skills and refinement. When the men of her acquaintance certainly did not. What virtue had any man shown towards Georgiana when they were only interested in her wealth? What skills at conversation did any man have when they were downright rude and insisted that she knew nothing, when actually society was determined to prevent them from knowing anything?
If she were indeed a blossom, Miss Charlotte Heywood certainly did not want to be plucked, she had by her second summer decided it would be better to be cast aside somewhere, thrown into the dust, where she could just be herself. And by circumstance, due to the determined will of two lively young girls, she had found that place.
She threw herself into it. From the first moment, she had let go … without restraint. Perhaps it was her reaction to all that she had observed, and could become so incessantly suffocating. Perhaps it was to protect herself. Perhaps she had sought to place all of her pent up energy into the lives of these two girls. At the start of her tenure as governess, she had felt that these girls would surely need it, given that their guardian and the master of the estate did not choose to favour society.
She felt such a strong need to prepare them - half from her own convictions, half from the obvious need that they would be looking out for themselves, if their father or uncle was to ever emerge from his study and his opinions, which were as reclusive as his own contact with society. Yet in these girls, she had met her match. They were ripe for it, they were ready to be met with and treated as equals. And, as she found in their guardian, she had met her match, he - not always ready for, but energised and responsive to her admonitions.
Heyrick Park had become a sort of hiding place. They were all hiding, in their separate ways, yet collectively finding each other. The ease of those shared times - picnicking, impostering dance partners, fixing dresses, music filling the space.
But the sereneness of those weeks of summer had collapsed. Those brief moments of belief, that she was known and heard for herself. When secrets were shared and met with the respect that this man’s confession was surely the least of him, that he was characterised more by all she had come to know, and see. Those brief days, when position was levelled, and two souls found each other.
Her recoil had been more intense. It was one thing to have one’s heart broken when one knew the breaking was done out of duty to family, in the most unforseen of circumstances. It was yet another; to have cared so deeply, to have been kissed so wantingly, to have been met with such equality. Yet each one of those things had been thrown back at her. Position. Shame. Regret.
As the season had turned, so had she. She had returned for a friend. A friend that felt all these things in the same way as she. In how many ways could these dishonourable acts of men be played out? How many variations on the theme could be composed? It would almost be enough to keep a writer of keen mind and sharp wit at the top of the fiction bestseller list for generations to come.
These things, Miss Charlotte Heywood thought about as she made her way along the streets of Sanditon. The light of the autumn sun cast different hues through the day, it caught the changing colours of the leaves now dancing at her feet, a cool breeze could be felt through the thickness of her coat, just managing to penetrate right to her skin. As light gave its way to darkness a little earlier each evening, Charlotte knew that while she loved the freedom and openness of the summer, she also needed the warmth and closeness of others in winter months.
She made her way across the tearoom to join Mary, Georgiana and Susan. The cakes and treats tempting the taste buds to the fruits of the season. A new offering of warm milk with spices. Her friends, offering her wisdom and friendship as a new season of her life beckoned.
She had returned to Sanditon as the trees were beginning to shed their leaves. In the last weeks, they had taught her the beauty of what it meant to let go. It would take more abandon this time, letting go would mean the risk of losing so much more.
A few short weeks ago, an equitability in their relationship had been established. He no longer had any authority over her. And she had the protection, or so it seemed, of her betrothed.
But in early Autumn, he had let go, as had she. On the cliff in his green coat, as the freshness of the days changed, the defences had dropped. Urgent confessions, a kiss as they clung to each other, to hell with propriety.
And then she had witnessed his steady strength. When all was laid bare, when he had let himself be exposed, when he stood rejected. He saw her, watched her, and knew her. And he had let her strengthen him more, by wishing her with him, listening to her when he sought the honour of his niece. It was the witness of a man who loved her enough to let her go. In the end, it was enough to let her risk everything for him, to risk a broken engagement, letting go of the security she had sought when she had given up on letting herself feel.
And that urgency had not left him. When he rode to find her, the forthrightness of his words. It had only ceased when it had found the steadiness of the kiss that gave them both the first taste that this was forever, this was indeed fathomless.
And so, Charlotte had stayed, and witnessed the full changing of the seasons. She’d returned to the Parkers, the first family she knew outside her own. To her friends, the lively conversations, walks and shared evenings. Spending more time at Heyrick Park, where the rooms caught a different glow in the autumn light, where the leaves were crisp below the feet of the foursome as they walked and took their first footsteps into becoming a family.
‘And what about the best hiding places, do they change with the seasons?’ she had asked him one day.
‘I have hiding places for all seasons, my dear Charlotte’, he had replied with a grin, as he reached out his hand and led her outside.
In the warm afternoon sun, behind a haystack in a sloping field that looked out to sea. In the freshness of morning, pressed up against the trunk of a large tree when they had gone to help with apple picking in an orchard on the far side of the estate.